Ends tomorrow

The Lower Mainland’s newest online marketplace will open on Monday, April 28, when LikeItBuyItVancouver.com begins previewing a limited-time sale of everything from household goods to consumer electronics to cruises, travel, cars, gift cards and personal services.

PLAYING ON: It wasn’t only white jackets and a harbour-and-mountains backdrop that gave Vancouver Symphony Orchestra players extra swagger Thursday. As Bramwell Tovey launched the 23rd Lovers’ Ball by conducting Leonard Bernstein’s Candide Overture, MC Christopher Gaze reminded Vancouver Convention Centre attendees that the VSO’s Fugitive Colours CD had received a classical album of the year Juno nomination.

That done, orchestra and UBC Opera Ensemble singers performed such Rat Pack staples as Love and Marriage, Somebody Loves You and All the Way. Music to ball chair Elizabeth Gordon’s ears, no doubt, if hardly to courtroom-sparring Francesco and Tali’ah Aquilini, who arrived separately.

Looking into a room decorated with five live palms, Tovey likely recalled his and wife Lana’s recent rainy vacation in Hawaii. The trees were old hat to the VSO Foundation’s new director of individual and legacy giving, Mary Butterfield, who saw many while raising millions for VanDusen Botanical Garden.

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ACT TO FOLLOW: The Tapestry Foundation for Health Care’s recent Scotiabank Feast of Fortune gala sure warranted its title. According to co-chair Anita Law, the $521,326 it raised swamped the target for a 3D ultrasound breast scanner to further speed diagnoses in Mount Saint Joseph Hospital’s diagnosis-to-surgery program. The campaign followed one for mammography equipment that also exceeded anticipations.

The result delighted recent double-mastectomy patient Ju Lo, whose friend Rani Dee had another procedure imminent. That was for delivery of her seventh child. “I’ve been pregnant every 20 months since I was 31,” Dee said, looking as screenworthy as when she acted in Thailand-shot feature films.

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MAGIC MOMENTS: The music may go around and around, but Harbour Centre’s revolving restaurant didn’t Wednesday. It stopped for Vancouver Opera chief James Wright to brief major supporters on Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which Leslie Dala will conduct at the QE Theatre March 9-17. With soprano Layla Clair ill, the role of Pamina will go to Rachel Fenlon once and five times to Simone Osborne. The latter UBC opera graduate has electrified audiences in New York, Toronto and Vancouver, as well as Prince George where, in another Dala-conducted Magic Flute, she sang the comic role of Papagena.

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UP PARRYSCOPE: Maybe Olympic wrestling would be reprieved by reverting to the original games’ format of naked combat.

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WRECK BEACH REDUX: Nakedness ruled when Photohaus Gallery and West 7 Studios staged the juried Eros exhibition at Seventh-off-Ontario recently. Ian McGuffie, who launched the annual show two decades ago, congratulated organizer Marc Koegel. Not just for staging it, but for contributing wall-sized works recorded on 60.5-megapixel Phase One IQ160 digital equipment that imparted the complexion of film. Adding historic contrast, Robert Kenney showed ambrotype and wet-negative works that likely challenged him as they did photo pioneers 160 years ago.

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AS THEY SAY: According to an old househusband’s tale: “If you want to know what your wife will look like, see her mother.” Add character to that formula and Devina Zalesky need only view Bido Sen, who raised her and brothers Rohit and Mohit as a single mother in Fiji. At her daughter’s 50th-birthday party this week, Sen said she scorned the long-ago question: “Why do you have to send a girl to school when she has to stay home and do the dishes?” Zalesky is president of Allwest Insurances Services, which writes $160-million worth of policies yearly.

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OLD HANDS: Backed by frequent collaborator Steve Dawson, singer Jim Byrnes packed the Sands Hotel pub to benefit the city-police-based Odd Squad Productions Society. Retired copper Chris Graham said the locale recognized RPB Hotels & Resorts president Craig Prystay giving the squad a Hummer H3 vehicle now in police markings. Black Hen Music owner Dawson is conspiring with Byrnes on a sixth CD to address the confluence of blues, country and gospel music. Meanwhile, he’s waxing actress Colleen Rennison’s debut solo album based on her soul-country single, No Sinner.

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DOWN PARRYSCOPE: A Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal rightly went to Banto Gill, the Khalsa Diwan Society’s first female member who was much involved in 1970 when, Vancouver’s 1908-founded Sikh gurdwara (temple) moved to Arthur Erickson-designed premises on Ross Street.